The Sandhill Cranes of Nebraska Too bad you weren't here six months ago, was a lament I heard on my visit to Nebraska. You could have seen the astonishing spectacle of the sandhill cranes, thousands of them feeding and even dancing on the shores of the Platte River. There was no point in pointing out the impossibility of my being there then because I happened to be somewhere else, so I nodded and put on a look of mild disappointment if only to be part of the commiseration. It was the same look I remember wearing about six months ago in Georgia when I was told that I had just missed the spectacular annual outburst of azaleas, brilliant against the green backdrop of spring and the same in Vermont six months before that when I arrived shortly after the magnificent foliage had gloriously peaked, Mother Nature, as she is called, having touched the hills with her many-colored brush, a phenomenon that occurs, like the others, around the same time every year when I am apparently off in another state, stuck in a motel lobby with the local paper and a styrofoam cup of coffee, busily missing God knows what.